


The Tenant's Cottage

by gloriousthorn



Category: Andrew Hozier-Byrne (Musician), Hozier - Fandom, It Will Come Back - Hozier (Song), To Be Alone - Hozier (Song)
Genre: F/M, Hozier, I don't, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Romance, cause, is it clear yet that I don't know how to use tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 18:23:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16331195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriousthorn/pseuds/gloriousthorn
Summary: She didn't think she'd ever see Andrew again.  But, as he would put it later, “There’s only one first love in anyone’s whole world.  Certainly in mine.”





	The Tenant's Cottage

**Author's Note:**

> I've noticed that there isn't a lot of Hozier fanfic out there. Hope someone likes this.
> 
> I've not made a close study of the man's biography, if for no other reason than I've already fed this obsession enough, so if any of this is inconsistent with the facts, well, that's why they call it fiction.
> 
> Rated M for language and sexy times but pretty vanilla.
> 
> Narrator's name is pronounced GRON-ya, in case you're not familiar with Irish pronunciations.
> 
> The song quoted near the beginning is "To Be Alone," which I'm sure you know if you took the time to seek out Hozier fanfic, and the poem at the end is by the Persian poet Rumi. 
> 
> Think that's it. Have fun.

I wasn’t planning to see him— I hadn’t known he was home, and certainly wouldn’t have thought he’d wanted to see me even if I had— but his mam called out to me while I was walking home from work, where the High Street meets the Meadow Road where his family’s place is, “Andrew’s home for a few days, you know.”

My face still went hot.  “Oh, is he?” I said, casual-like.

“Out at the cottage, though, I think.”

“Where else?” I rejoined, lightly.

“Heaven knows what he’s getting up to in that heap of stones.”

We both knew well enough; still it was charming to act like we didn’t, as if he were still just the eccentric local boy keeping odd hours and toting that guitar with him everywhere.  “Aye,” I said.

“Well, will you go out to see him then?”

“Oh.  I’ll not want to bother him.”

She shifted her weight to her left hip, the better to fix me with a stern, but not unfriendly, look.  “You know, the two of you were hardly more than children,” she said. “Still are, if you ask me. You didn’t know any better, either of you.  You might as well go out there and see him. Don’t tell him I said so— we don’t need to go swelling up his head— but he mightn’t be home for a time after this, and how much time he’ll have for his mam and his school friends, who knows.  Go see him.”

“Ah, well, then.  I’ll stop by.”

“That’s a good girl.  I’m off to the shops. Tell your mam hello for me later.”

“I will.”

She smiled; I managed a smile back, pushed my satchel with my dirty apron and my sketchbook and a bottle of Slane in it up on my shoulder.  I unlatched the gate at the edge of their property and walked down the short garden path to the field, and then the long walk through the field to the old tenant’s cottage.  As I approached, I could hear him singing. It was enough, as always, to stop me in my tracks:

  
_It feels good, girl it feels good_

_Feels good, girl it feels good_

_Feels good, girl it feels good_

_Oh, to be alone with you_

I remembered the first time I heard him mumble-sing those words, trying out the lyrics with the melody.  We were there, at the cottage, of course; it always felt like we were on borrowed time there, whether we were hiding out from our parents when we were younger or sitting with the idea that his family wanted to get rid of it when we were a little older (though, as his mam pointed out, still hardly more than kids).  Maybe they didn’t want to maintain it, or maybe they figured out what Andrew and I were getting up to out there. And while they might have appreciated our relative discretion to not go fornicating in the main house, still it was only a matter of time before a set of headlights or an insomniac dog-walker late at night revealed the two of us tearing out over the field to slip into the cottage and while away the wee hours, learning how to pleasure and damage each other.

But right then Andrew was singing, just those few lines over and over, noodling on the guitar a bit in between.  I really didn’t think he’d want to see me, especially not then, no matter what his mam said. Still I pushed my satchel up my shoulder again and walked toward the cottage.

He had no right having that voice.  Tall, but slight. Nothing to him. Hair almost as long as mine, delicate features.   But when he sings, it comes from a deep, dark place, not the wide-open field but the bog or the forest beyond.  Who knows how it got into that skinny throat of his. And he was still discovering it in those very first days of running out to the cottage.  I got to hear some of those songs first. I’ll always have that, I suppose.

Anyway.  I rapped on the door.  I could have walked right in, like I used to. The cottage didn’t lock.  He stopped singing. It seemed to take longer than it should have for him to come to the door.  

But he opened it.  “Grainne,” he said.  “Wow. Hi.”

“Hi.  Your— ah, your mam said you were here.”

“Ah, well, can’t put anything past her.”

We both paused.

“Listen, I can go.  I’m sure you’re— busy, with everything—”

He sighed.  “No, you should come in.”

“Oh, should I then?”

“Well, do you want to?”

A standoff already.  Christ. “I— just came to say hello, I guess.”

“Well, let’s do it proper, then.  Come in. I’ll fix us some tea.” He stood back then and opened the door.  I remembered how heavy it was when I’d stumble out in the dark, sometimes— most always, I suppose— still drunk, on love if not on whisky or wine.  It creaked, my God, too. It was loud. And there was that one shutter latch that didn’t catch, and would whack against the casement on stormy nights.  I remembered listening to his heartbeat, laying my head on his chest, and then the smack and the rattle of that shutter.

Reluctantly I stepped inside.  He’d cleaned it up— the little wrought-iron bed made neatly, all his musical equipment save the single guitar moved out, the chipped and mismatched dishes stacked in the glass-fronted cupboards.  We weren’t so particular, once. He gestured to one of the cane chairs at the table against the wall. He hadn’t lit a fire, so it was damp and chilly. He never minded the cold. I did.

He turned on the kettle.  “You worked today?”

“Aye.”

“How’s everything at the shop?”

“Oh, fine.  The usual.”

“Your mam?”

“She’s good.”

“What else are you up to, then?”

“Oh, Christ, Andrew, what am I ever up to?  Work and keeping my mam off my back.”

“Ah, she wants what’s best for you.”

“She wants me to go back to bloody school.”

“Well, she’s not wrong.”

“I felt like an arse there.  Just a country girl with drawings of trees and houses.  You know that.”

“You’re too smart and talented to work in a tea shop for the rest of your life.”

“Ah, give it a rest, will you?  I didn’t come for a lecture about my future.”

“Well, what did you come for, then?” Andrew pulled two cups down and set them on the counter.

“I don’t know!  I was just walking down the High Street and your mam said you were home, that’s all.  I— ” I really didn’t. Being back in the cottage felt oppressive all of a sudden. I couldn’t help but remember the absolutely epic fight we had that led our mams to ask us what happened and drove him practically underground into his music, off to some hole in the city for months with no word from him at all.

The water boiled; he dropped a tea bag into each cup.  “All right, Grainne,” he said. “I’ve got an idea. What do you say we be friends today, hmm?  I’m in town for one more day before this tour starts. Dublin, London, Edinburgh. Then America.  It might be months before I’m back. If we’re going to talk, let’s not fuck it up too badly.”

“I know, I know.  Okay.” I took a deep breath.  “I— heard about the tour. It sounds really great.”

“Well, we’ll see.”  He poured water into each cup.  “It’s you, you know. All those songs.”

I laughed, sadly.  “I was afraid of that.”

He smiled, not unkindly.  “Who else?”

“You might have just invented them.  Out of whole cloth.”

“Not a chance, I’m afraid.”  He considered the cups. “I didn’t bring a lemon, sorry.”

“It’s fine.  Thanks. Want a shot?”  I drew the Slane from my satchel.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

I topped off each cup with the whisky.  He drank his with lots of sugar, which he stirred in with a tarnished spoon too small for his hand.

We sat like we used to for a long moment.  The tea and whisky did warm me up. The birdsong and the breeze drifted past the open windows, and the scene almost became pleasant.

“What are you thinking?” I asked him.

He took a minute.  “It’s good to see you,” he said.  “Better than I’d have expected. Thinking about singing all those songs about you, every night, for these months coming up.  I’ll be thinking about this now, too. Remembering how pretty you look even after you’ve worked all day or gone running across the field.  Wishing we’d known better.”

“Ah, you won’t wish anything about a shop girl soon enough.  You’ll have the whole world open to you.”

“There’s only one first love in anyone’s whole world.  Certainly in mine.”

“Andrew.”  I paused. “I’m sorry, you know.  I should have said it a lot sooner.”

“Ah, it’s water under the bridge.”

“I don’t think it is.  I felt terribly about it as soon as it happened, really.  When we had that fight about it, I just couldn’t stand the idea of being shut out of— this.  I was a petty, jealous child. And I know I hurt you terribly, and I’m sorry.”

He considered me, putting his cup on the table.  We’d both said such ugly things, damn near came to blows.  It wasn’t hard for the heat between us to spark fires of anger as easily as those of passion.   _You selfish, arrogant fuck.  Go off and be a fucking_ musician, _I don’t care._ And _Grainne, you cheated on me with that whore of a rugby player, of all fucking things, I just needed some time and you couldn’t give it to me._

I wanted to slap him.  I almost did. That dreamy, otherworldly quality I’d been falling in love with since high school was taking him away from me.  He was spending more of his time writing, touring with the choir, playing his own gigs, wanting days and nights to commune with the muses in between.  I didn’t know what to do with myself, especially after I left college in utter humiliation— just work at the shop or see movies or go to clubs with the girls— but I suppose I missed just walking in the road with him, and I definitely missed stealing off to the cottage.

“I mean, you had to tell me, for whatever reason,” he said.  “I wonder, a lot, if I’d rather just not have known.”

“Well, I wanted to hurt you.  That was part of it. But part of it was that you’d hurt me too, and I couldn’t find a way to make you understand.  Just telling you how lonely I was, how people were asking if we’d broken up because they never saw us together anymore, and after college didn’t work out...I was so lost, right as you were finding yourself.  It was hell, Andrew.”

He looked down then, his hair falling over his face for a moment before he pushed it back.  My face was hot again: with the shame of what I’d done, with the anger I still felt even more than a year after the fact.  When I could look back at his face, it was drawn, his eyes heavy. Finally he looked up at me.

“I’m sorry too,” he said.  “I should have known the pain you were in.  I was so in love with the idea of getting— to here, I guess, to people telling me I could be good.  I thought I needed every moment to get here. And I just assumed you’d wait for me. I’m sorry about that too.”

A tear slipped down my cheek.  “Andrew, I’m a bloody fool.”

“Ah, I might be one too, I’m afraid.”

“Your mother said we didn’t know any better.”

“She’s probably right.  She usually is.”

“Are they still talking about pulling this place down?”

“Not so much anymore.  I think they’re hoping to sell it for ten times what it’s worth, frankly, but of course they won’t say as much to me.”

“Either way, it’d be a shame.”

“I know.  I want them to keep it.”  He took a drink. “I like the idea of coming back here.  For what, well...Writing more here, maybe. Lots of ghosts hanging about.”

“I was a little surprised you were here.  After...everything.”

“Everything indeed.   Well, we made a lot of beautiful memories together here too.”  He paused. “When it was good between us, Grainne...Jesus, I just wanted to die in your arms.  We, you know, we’ve known each other forever, and I just thought— we _would_ know each other forever, and grow old like a pair of trees before we’d go back to the earth together.  Why am I back here? Where else could I go?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”

“I can’t _not_ see you.  I see you everywhere.  When I come back here, you’re just more real— I hear you, I smell you sometimes, I—”

I kissed him then.  I didn’t know if he’d let me, but he did.  He kissed back, with hunger, and before we knew it, we were out of our seats and pulling one another close, kissing like we’d never have another chance.  And maybe we wouldn’t. Who knew what would happen once he really got out in the world— out of our little county and island, everywhere glamorous and new— who knew if this would still feel like home?

“You’re cold,” he said when we finally came up for air.

“I’m fine,” I said.

He shook his head, touched his finger to the side of my mouth for a moment.  “The fire makes me think of you,” he said. “The smell of it. I remember lighting the fire for you, always.”

Something inside me trembled at that, trembled and fell open like a door in the floor.  When had he come back here and thought of starting a fire? When did he, and longed for me?  How often did I remember that he’d never let me get cold?

I reached for his shoulders inside his shirt.  His skin was indeed still warm despite the chill.

“Grainne,” he said softly.  “Are you sure?”

I nodded.  “Are you?”

“Sure as you’re born.”

I reached up to unbutton his shirt.  He looked so blessedly the same. I remembered looking at his fair, freckled skin, silvery in moonlight and golden-red in firelight.  In the half-light of the late afternoon slipping in through the window, it was a little of each.

Meanwhile he was unbuttoning my jeans and slipping his hand under the waist.  “Ah, that’s where you’re warm,” he teased, his fingers coming to rest on the outside of my panties.

“Ah, for fuck’s sake, Andrew.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever get to have you again.”

“Well, you’ve got me now.”  I pushed his shirt off his shoulders,

“I do.”  He took me by the waistband of my jeans.  “Come here,” he said, tugging me towards the bed, covered in the same old soft white sheets and blue flannel blanket I remembered.

And— though I wouldn’t have thought it possible not two hours before— we made love again in the tenant’s cottage on the edge of the land, the edge of propriety, safety, holiness.  The sheets were soft and the room grew warm despite the breeze and the chill. His kisses lit me up from my feet to the crown of my head, and when he entered me I cried out from the familiarity of his body returned when I had long given up hope of his coming back to me, or my coming back to him.

“Grainne,” he murmured, “my first, my love, come home to me.”

“Andrew, I never stopped loving you.”

“I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried.”

And we collapsed in each other’s arms, the bed now unmade, the chill dispelled.  We watched the sun start to dip in the sky; we listened to the birdsong in the forest.

Finally I said, “What do we do now,” less a question than a mere statement that life would have to go on.

He propped himself up on his elbow, tracing one finger along the curve of my right breast.  “If nothing else,” he said, “we part as friends. We’ve forgiven each other. That alone is a privilege, the privilege to cede territory and meet in the middle, the privilege to confess and apologize and absolve.”

I nodded, after a moment.  “That’s a good start,” I said.  “I— I can’t wait for you. I just can’t.  It was too hard the first time.”

“I can’t ask you to.  You have so much life in front of you.  Go back to school. Work on your art.”

“I don’t know.”

“Grainne, start your life.  Quit the shop, take whatever money you have, go to the city.”

“I’ve got a little.”

“It’ll be enough.”

“I’m afraid.  I just knew I was rubbish the last time I went.  I don’t think I’m any better now.”

“But you know better.  Everyone thinks they’re rubbish a lot of the time.  Go be brave, Grainne, and don’t wait.”

I thought about this and looked up at the dark beams crossing the ceiling.  “If I go,” I said, “and I’m not here when you come home— ”

“When I’m ready to come home,” he said, “you’ll be the first to know.  And we’ll meet back here. No matter what.”

We couldn’t promise a happily ever after, of course.  Not the way people think of it. But after we parted, late in the evening, after we sat by the fire and he sang me a new song or two, after we kissed goodbye, after I put in my notice at the shop, I found a poem in a book he’d given me years ago:

 

_Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing_

_and rightdoing, there is a field._

_I will meet you there._

 

_When the soul lies down in that grass,_

_the world is too full to talk about._

 

_Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense._

 

Someday, when we are both ready to come home, we will meet in that field, Andrew and I, at the edge of which will still sit the tenant’s cottage.  We’ll lie in the grass or in the bed like we once did, our only first loves in all the world.

For now, I take the train into the city.  His mam waves fondly to me on her way to the shops while I wait at the station, sketching.  I am leaving. But I will be home again. So too will he.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
